Many industries utilize large quantities of frozen, fresh, or sea water ice for refrigeration purposes. These include shipboard and land-based seafood processing plants, grocery stores, and other facilities. Flake ice or cube ice can be manufactured in large capacity by automated ice making machines, which freeze liquid material on a cooling surface and then periodically remove the frozen product in chunks or flakes. One such example is a rotating disk ice machine disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,646 to Niblock. Such machines can be operated to produce a continuous stream of frozen product, which typically must be stored in a container until such time that it is to be utilized by the industrial consumer. Thereafter it is necessary to dispense the ice from the storage container.
Many conventional ice making machines operate in conjunction with hoppers, into which ice is dispensed from the ice making machine as it is produced. Once a sufficient quantity of ice builds up in the hopper, the hopper is removed from the machine and the ice may be manually dispensed.
Other ice making machines have been designed to operate in conjunction with automated ice storage systems including a hopper or container in which a mechanized dispensing device is mounted. One such example is an ice rake and delivery system sold by Northstar Ice Equipment Corporation, which includes a container provided with a conveyor-type ice rake that rakes a layer of frozen product from the container on a continuous basis, with the raked product being fed to a discharge device such as a rotating screw conveyor, i.e. an auger. Still other mechanized ice storage and dispensing devices utilize a discharge auger that is orbitally mounted in the bottom of an ice storage bin. The auger sweeps the bottom of the bin to receive and discharge a stream of frozen product. Such auger type storage and dispensing systems are an improvement over manual discharge hoppers, but can be complex and costly to manufacture and maintain.
Other devices have been developed for dispensing ice from containers that utilize a rotating rake. One such device is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 3,463,362 to Garber, which utilizes a rotating rake that removes ice from the top of a pile of ice stored within a container. The container includes a platform that is movably mounted within the container, and which is biased upwardly towards the rake by a spring compressed between the platform and the floor of the container. A further example is disclosed by U.S. Pat. No. 2,735,591 to Branchflower, which utilizes a rotating rake having arcuate arms to which a plurality of downwardly projecting teeth are secured. As the arm rotates, it translates longitudinally downward along a shaft at a continues rate, grinding against the top of a pile of ice stored within a container. As the rotating rake moves downwardly, ice is swept to one of a series of discharge doors which open in sequence along the height of the container.
These rotating rake devices are more compact than auger-type devices, but must be manually reconfigured to refill the device after dispensing is completed. Further, adjustment of the rake relative to the platform or floor of the container occurs only in a continuous fashion, as driven either by mechanical linkages or a spring biasing force, without regard to variations in the level of ice within the container or to the degree of resistance being met by the rake.